


Your Kid Dreams

by Seaward



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, New Years
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-29
Updated: 2014-12-29
Packaged: 2018-03-04 04:58:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2953196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seaward/pseuds/Seaward
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the latest aliens talk about sharing dreams for the new year, there's a little more involved than Rodney expects.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Kid Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks again to Elayna for looking this over. Remaining mistakes are all mine.

"Welcome to Domar, pilgrims. We wish you a promising and productive new year."

Rodney is distracted by a tiny spike in energy readings. It's the only sign of anything interesting on this planet thus far, so he scrabbles at his datapad and ignores the native ambassador in his floor length (make that ground length) blue tunic and seashell necklace.

John's elbow pokes him in the ribs. "Pleased to meet you. I'm Colonel Sheppard. This is Dr. McKay, Ronon, and Teyla."

"You are all welcome, but please hurry. You were almost too late on this, the shortest day of our year. The dreams of youth, brought forward for the new year, must begin as soon as the sun sets."

"Um," John slouches forward and gives the robed man what Rodney thinks of as his "aw shucks" look. "We just came to make friends and discuss trade. Maybe we should come back another time?"

"No, please stay." The ambassador smiles and lifts an arm to gesture behind him. Rodney tries to refine the barely there energy readings. "This is a most auspicious occasion for building new relationships. As you have arrived today, we are honored to have you share the dreaming. Now, each of you must settle with a partner in one of the remaining tents with an open door." He waves toward the far side of a raging bonfire.

Near where they're standing, on the path from the Stargate, there are three relatively solid wooden buildings. Spread around the fire in a rough circle are twenty or thirty tents. They appear to have been assembled ad hoc from animal pelts, woolen cloaks and what might have been either tarps or canvas sails.

"We are honored to join you," Teyla says with a nod.

Ronon nods.

John repeats the word "honored" with an elbow to Rodney's ribs.

Rodney mutters, "If we could just stop by these buildings, I'm getting an intermittent—"

John elbows him harder, and his elbows are unreasonably sharp.

"Yes, honored, thanks," Rodney intones with the flat sarcasm that Pegasus natives never seem to call him on. As they hurry around the fire, he scans everything he can and learns only that there are precisely two life signs within each tent. When they reached the open tents on the far side of the fire he says, "Everyone else is in twos."

"Keep your radios and boots on, just in case. I'll take McKay." The way John says it implies Rodney's more burdensome than desirable. Then again, Rodney's never been great at social nuances, and he still can't tell sometimes whether John is truly annoyed or just baiting Rodney to get a reaction. Since they'd finally fallen into bed together a few months before, everything is even less clear. It was a revelation to know John desired him; that John could even swing that way and seemed to have some past experience was more than Rodney had hoped. But John admitted afterward that he never intended to act on his feelings. His excuse is military regs. Rodney's pretty sure some well traveled emotional baggage accompanied John's original plans not to get involved as well as his unwillingness to break it off once started. The whole thing makes Rodney uncertain in ways he hadn't been before, but the sex is great. Rodney's mostly trying to follow John's lead while constructing a general theory of what John wants and how not to screw up the best relationship Rodney thinks he'll ever have a chance at.

The tent John leads him into is currently in the line of smoke from the fire. Probably that's why it's still available. There are two straw-filled beds, or maybe pallets would be the more appropriate term. The tent is so narrow that even with each bed touching a side wall, there are only a few inches in between.

Rodney starts to take his shoes off and John says, "Keep them on. You can leave your tac vest just to the side."

"You do realize jokes about military men doing it with their boots on are not supposed to be about actually sleeping."

John glares as he takes his own tac vest off.

"I know." Rodney holds up his hands. "Never in the field, except maybe with alien priestesses and glowy ascended beings."

John's glare crosses into a scowl. "Just lie down for a bit. It's mid-morning Atlantis time, so I don't think any of us need to 'actually' sleep."

Rodney coughs as he settles on his back. "I'll just lie here and asphyxiate on this fine wood smoke."

"Try to asphyxiate quietly. I'll be listening for trouble as much as keeping watch through the gaps in the walls." John lies down on his back as well.

"Expecting a bed check?"

"Shhh."

In a moment of quiet defiance, Rodney sets his datapad to monitor sound. The rapidly waning sunlight makes the screen look bright in contrast. Rodney soon spots a regularly recurring spike of sound, even though he can't hear it above the roar of the bonfire and the whistling of wind through cracks in the makeshift tent. More fiddling confirms that the very faint sound coincides with similarly faint fluctuations in the energy reading he'd traced before. Intending to show John the matched readings, Rodney starts to lift his datapad. But a sudden wave of drowsiness makes his hand impossibly heavy. As his muscles relax, the datapad drops beside him on the bed, and he falls asleep in an instant.

#

_He runs. He jumps. He reaches his tan, skinny arms out in front of him and flies._

_Movement. Air slicing through bristly short hair. It's cold, but he is flying! Beneath him the house, driveway, horse stables, and fields rush by._

_Breathing deeply, he sucks in the chilling air that beats against his face. Looking forward blasts his eyes dry. Looking down makes them sting and water. He blinks fast and looks hard. There, past the tall grass at the edge of the trees, something moves. A small, dark ball of fur shivers and curls tighter in on itself._

_He flies down to the black pup and hears it whining. Trying to land he lifts his chin, arms and chest scraping across grass and dirt. But the scrapes don't hurt. He's done it! He's found the lost pup!_

_Now he gathers the quivering animal to his chest. It acts cold but feels warm through his shirt. He uses both arms to keep the pup safe, to carry it home, just walking. Maybe his parents will let him keep this one._

#

Waking with a start, Rodney catches a quick glimpse of John's sleeping face, looking relaxed with the faintest trace of a smile.

John never smiles like that.

Something in Rodney's genius brain shifts and he adds tan, skinny arms to flying and horse stables. He's shared a dream from John's childhood. The freaky natives might have a little more to their new year's ritual than platitudes about dreams of youth and sharing dreams. It's easy to miss when aliens are being literal. Healthy paranoia insists that Rodney wake John to discuss possible risks and how this might relate to the earlier power readings. But Rodney's eyes refuse to stay open and his limbs are too heavy to move.

#

_Food. Food. Food. Quiet. Quiet. Quiet._

_Creep along behind the counter. Peek around the corner._

_Someone, grandma, is cooking. Her back is turned. There's a bowl of fruit with bananas. But it also has oranges and lemons. Oranges and lemons are touching the bananas, and he's afraid to touch any of them._

_Hungry. Saying so is rude. Quiet. Quiet. Quiet._

_There are shiny metal boxes on the counter. Way back. By the wall. Probably just have flour and cooking stuff._

_Grandma turns, carrying a skeleton to the trash._

_He pulls his head back. Must hide._

_It's a fish skeleton. Fish for dinner._

_There are crackers in a box. They're on a different counter._

_He sneaks behind the length of the first counter. The box of crackers looks new. Unopened. Grownups would know if he took some. Grandma might see him if she looks to this side. Too risky. What else is there?_

_What is grandma doing? She's taking a lemon from the fruit bowl! One quick chop. Half of the lemon is squeezed over the fish. But she knows!_

_He runs and hides under the table with the big white table cloth. Huff, huff, huff. His breathing is fast._

_…_

_He's very hungry at dinner. He eats three rolls with butter._

_Mom says, "Eat your fish, Meredith."_

_"Can't. Grandma put lemon." He stares at the fish, not at grandma, not at mom or dad._

_"No, she didn't. Now eat your fish."_

_Mom looks away. They all keep talking. He thinks grownups have ways of sharing secrets. Somehow they know things sometimes, things he couldn't guess. But other times, they don't know things. They don't think much._

_He saw grandma squeeze the lemon. Does mom think he doesn't know a lemon? How could grandma not know a lemon? Why did mom say it wasn't so?_

_He saw. He can't unknow. Not about lemon._

_He uses his cloth napkin to wipe his face. He's supposed to use it. That's good._

_He uses his cloth napkin to grab his fish off the plate. That's bad. But so is lemon. He's scared even touching lemon through the cloth. He'll have to wash his hands with lots of soap._

_He lets the fish sit on his lap as grandma's little gray cat winds around his chair. He wishes hard at the cat, Whiskers, to jump in his lap. Finally, Whiskers jumps up and eats the fish from his napkin._

_He loves Whiskers. Maybe Whiskers will love him now._

_He wants another roll. But there might be lemon on his hands. He keeps quiet without another roll._

#

Rodney wakes in the tent with the wood smoke. He remembers seeing grandma with the lemon and the fish. That was before he knew that grandma didn't always remember what she was supposed to. It was years before she died, years before he learned words like "Alzheimer's" and "dementia."

There were nights when Rodney was little, when he woke up screaming. He remembers nightmares about discovering his citrus allergy, about anaphylactic shock and lying in the dirt unable to breathe. That only happened once—at a potluck. It involved fruit salad when he was too young to understand, maybe two or three. If he had anxiety dreams later about his grandma and the fish with lemon, he doesn't remember those dreams. He thinks this dream is a memory of a real visit, maybe when he was four or five, but that doesn't mean he hasn't dreamed about it, too. It could be a valid dream remembered from his childhood. It's so different from John's dream that Rodney wonders what John made of it, assuming it was also shared.

His eyes dart nervously toward John. His soft stubbled face is blank—no fear, no happiness, no reaction. Rodney wonders if John experienced the lemon dream. If so, he must know where it came from, with the fear of citrus and the use of Rodney's first name, Meredith. Rodney cringes in embarrassment and is glad John isn't awake to tease him.

Closing his eyes, Rodney lets John's easy breathing guide him back to sleep.

#

_Both parents and his brother are asleep as he pops the screen from his bedroom window. He pushes hard off the windowsill and soars into the moon bright sky. His hands are freckled and still sticky from cotton candy. The night air hangs warm and humid, but the breeze from flying makes the summer night perfect. Faster than ever, he pushes forward with arms and legs strong from swimming, using moves he learned from breaststroke. He swims and soars through the night sky—past the horses, past his block, past his school and his church and farther than he ever walks or bikes._

_He remembers the right turn at the gas station and later the green sign that points him to the highway. From there it's stroke and coast, following a river of cars until he sees the still unmoving lights of the Ferris wheel._

_The Ferris wheel has been broken all day. His mother had promised they'd keep checking, and they had. The cotton candy when they left had been meant to make him feel better, because the Ferris wheel still wasn't working._

_Now John has found his way back all by himself, without a single wrong turn or any grownup help. His mother would be so proud if she knew. She'd call him her "little man" and pet his hair. If only she could see what he's going to do now._

_Swimming silently down to the ground, he lands inside the Ferris wheel fence._

_Unseen by the older kids and adults still wandering the carnival, he crouches at the base of the Ferris wheel. He opens the big metal flap in its shiny red and yellow base where a man in overalls had been working earlier with a beat up tool box and a buzzing drill. The tools are still spread out on the ground. The screw driver is easy to use and makes more sense than the hammer, the only other familiar tool. He's brave enough to use the noisy drill if he must, but something tells him the screw driver will be enough._

_Lefty loosey. He loosens four screws and removes a black rectangle from the very center of the machine. Under it he finds wires of many colors, but a single fat red one has come undone. He wraps it around an empty screw and remembers righty tighty to fasten it down and replace the black rectangle._

_Then he closes the big metal flap and backs away to the button that starts the wheel turning._

_One push and the machinery groans. Another push and the wheel turns._

_His feet start jumping of their own accord and his arms wave in a bouncy victory dance. Then before the wheel gets going too fast, he jumps into a passing seat. It swings wildly, but of course he catches hold and slides in. After finding his way back to the carnival and fixing his favorite ride, he's earned this. The Ferris wheel will take him round and round for as long as he wants as he rocks in the seat and stares up at the stars._

#

Rodney wakes again, wondering why he's so restless when John hasn't woken once. He wants to pull John close and stroke his hair the way young John imagined his mother doing. The quiet man beside him is no longer the boy who celebrated finding his way and knowing how to fix his favorite ride with just a screwdriver—but that's the core of the man he loves—the man who can lose himself in a thicket but navigate space with ease, the man who operates Ancient instruments with a touch and a thought and is still pretty handy with a screwdriver for a non-engineer. Love. Rodney wishes he could say that to John, but it's as far removed from what they talk about as the child John's spontaneous victory dance is from what they do.

Through the gaps around their tent walls, Rodney sees alien stars and wishes he could dream himself onto that Ferris wheel with John.

#

_The music pounds through his fingers. Patterns flow straight to his brain. He's been practicing contrapuntal derivations. (He hates to call them canons, that's too simple, like "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" or "Frere Jacques.") He's helping melodies to chase each other, to run inverse to each other, to run in different rhythms but proportional to each other. Each variation appears in his mind like a wiring diagram. His thoughts become a machine, a perfect set of connections._

_Fleshy fingers, struggling for speed and reach across black and white keys, become longer. Smooth metal replaces skin until his hands are elongated metallic replicas, reaching perfectly and striking each note. The metal hands follow commands from the wiring in his brain. Fine, color-coded wires extend between brain and hands. As his arms upgrade, the silvery metal spreads outward from his hands, covering his arms, neck, and head._

_His feet on the piano pedals require wiring and metal reinforcement to keep pace. The music speeds and interweaves, evolving with him into his android form as the music becomes faster and more complex._

_"You're playing is technically excellent," the harsh voice of his piano teacher barely reaches him through the surrounding structure of the music, "But you'll never be great because you have no soul."_

_The perfect music ends abruptly. Shiny fingertips snap off and shoot across the keys. Finger joints explode away as wires shred and sizzle. Metal joints burst at elbow, knee, and hip. Frayed wires are exposed. Sparks jump. His pristine electronic brain explodes. There is only pain and blinding brightness as he screams in silence without a mouth._

#

Rodney jerks up, except his body hardly moves. His mouth is slightly open, but not enough to scream. Tent walls aglow with moonlight and fire reflections replace the blinding brightness. In a moment Rodney's glad he didn't scream out loud, but then he's wondering why he couldn't.

His eyes can shift enough to see John still sleeping quietly beside him. There could be a slight frown on his face, or that might be Rodney's imagination. Either way, something must be preventing John from waking between dreams, perhaps a psychoactive component in the smoke from the fire burning in front of their tent. Or it could be that Rodney's waking is atypical, some sort of allergic reaction that forces him to consciousness but won't allow him to move.

John hasn't moved all night.

Rodney wonders if they're both experiencing the same dreams, alternating from one of their childhoods to the other. Each dream brings a slightly older point of view. If Rodney was twelve when he gave up piano, then that's more than halfway through his childhood. But it's less than a third of the way to his current age. No telling how many more dreams will come. No chance to question an alien rule book or seek data on a possibly Ancient energy signature.

Rodney wishes desperately that he could reach his datapad even as he's pulled down into sleep.

#

_The house is silent when he wakes._

_It's too late._

_He runs to his parents' room. All his mother's clothes and the things he gave her are gone. Her smell is gone._

_It's too late._

_All that's left are dad's suits and dad's smell._

_Heart thumping, he runs down the stairs, out the front door, and across the wide porch. One super-powered leap carries him to the end of the road. A larger flying leap takes him over the nearest copse of trees. Anger burns away the wind chill. Flying in mile long leaps eats up highway as he chases out to the canyon. Out by the ranch. Out to what used to be a good place._

_He slows and lands at the sharpest turn in the canyon road, looks down. His mother's Caddy is far below, a smashed up toy below steep cliffs._

_A single leap, more like guided falling than flying, brings him to her car._

_Beside the car is a heap of his mother's flesh and bones. Some of the bones poke out through broken skin. Blood soaks her clothes and mats her hair. He pulls her to him using both his arms, but she doesn't feel right. Her body is stiff, broken, cold, sticky, smelly._

_It's too late._

_He holds her anyway and cries. The cold of winter morning turns to the cold of winter night. Tears make his face sticky, but not as sticky as her blood on his hands. Tears clear his mind, so he's left not thinking. Empty._

_Then Davey's walking toward him. Davey is strong and soft and warm. He looks old enough to play football or soccer with the high school boys. He looks old enough to handle something like this._

_The only word he says it, "John." Then Davey settles himself behind John and wraps his larger frame around John's scrawny back and shoulders. His legs surround John's on both sides. His arms hold John close without touching his mother, although he doesn't shy away from the blood and mess that has spread to John. Davey nuzzles in behind John's ear and again says only "John."_

_They sit that way until the full moon is high overhead. John's mind is still empty. Davey is the only thing holding him together._

_Then John's father appears from nowhere, stark and clean in a perfect suit. The moon shines like a spotlight as his father yells, "Get away from him. I never want to see you together again. You're a disgrace to her memory."_

_…_

_John is suddenly alone in his bedroom. He's clean, and nothing smells like his mother, alive or dead. The moon is a sliver of its former self. John is coming apart. It's invisible, like evaporation. His minds is still empty, so he can't understand, but his clean hands still feel sticky as if he's been touching his mother's battered corpse._

#

"Wake up, John." The words don't sound or move Rodney's mouth. He remembers the paralysis of his previous wakings. John's adult face, clear of tear tracks, is unfamiliar in the moment as Rodney glances as far to the side as he can.

Rodney's body feels tight and tense, even if he can't move. His breathing is shallow, and the remaining wood smoke in the air nearly chokes him. His eyes sting. He wishes he could cry. He wishes for John to not experience the dreams or at least to not remember. Even though John's first two dreams were wonderful, the last one had to be devastating to remember. Whatever really happened to John's mother, whatever comfort John lost or imagined losing to his father's anger, Rodney now knows for certain with some bizarre shared truth how devastating it was for John.

He doesn't want John to carry the added the burdens from Rodney's earlier childhood dreams either. This isn't any way to start a new year. He falls asleep resenting the customs of this latest Pegasus planet.

#

_"Rodney, want to be partners?" a boy asks from behind as he pokes Rodney's shoulder where he's hunched over his desk._

_Rodney doesn't even look up from his accelerated schoolwork to ask, "What?"_

_"For the science fair."_

_"Why?" This time Rodney glances at the person asking and sees a tall blond boy he thinks might be in his supposed physics class._

_"I hear you're a genius, going to college early. I also hear your project can generate an insane amount of power from waves at the coast. I've designed a robot that could show off that power."_

_…_

_Lying on their backs on a bluff overlooking the coast, the boy's arm presses carelessly against Rodney's, skin to skin below the sleeves of their tee shirts. Their jean clad knees even bump together now and then. It makes Rodney's body tingle all over, and he wonders if it means what he thinks it means._

_They watch the robot dig a moat a foot deep using a rotating set of shovels. Discarded sand spews to one side of the pit where the other end of the robot presses it together to form a miniature levee. By rotating the pressing tools opposite to the digging set, the forces counter-balance in what Rodney has to admit, at least to himself, is an elegant design given the very basic principles involved. The cable bringing power to the robot connects to Rodney's Wave Harvest Accumulation Machine (WHAM), which in a better world would win him much more than a science fair given his theoretical innovations in the field of fluid dynamics._

_For the moment, he is surprisingly willing to set aside thoughts of scientific recognition, as he leans in to try for a kiss._

_His partner jumps back. "Rodney, quit it. I'm not a girl!"_

_…_

_The next thing Rodney knows, he is in the same position again, lying on the bluff while the robot and WHAM work below. This time his partner is a freckled, red-headed girl in a frilly blouse who jumps back saying, "Meredith, quit it. I'm not a boy!"_

_Looking down, perhaps the body beneath "Meredith's" tee shirt and jeans is a bit curvier, but the name "Meredith" still grates._

_…_

_The jeans and tee shirt stay the same and without looking it is hard to tell what body parts lurk underneath. The latest science project partner, again arm to arm on the bluff, is wearing cut off shorts and a black tank top. The lack of breasts under the tank top could be ambiguous at this age as could the clothes on the skinny body, but the bulge in the denim cut offs is hard to miss._

_Rodney feels his own body react with a sudden erection held tight by his jeans, which answers one questions at least. Nerve endings still tingle along his arm where skin touches skin, and he's practically vibrating as he leans across to kiss his partner._

_He catches a glimpse of spiky black hair as lips brush lips, softer than wind chapped lips could possibly be. Then the other boy's tongue flicks out, crossing Rodney's lower lip like a tickle he can taste. The tongue slips in to trace his teeth, slide along his tongue, and Rodney's world goes white and sparkly._

#

Rodney wakes in a smoke scented tent on an alien planet with a hard on from a dream he hasn't thought about in years. Stranger in some ways is that he remembers the original dream from high school, mostly because he'd been fool enough to ask his sister what she thought it meant. Jeannie said she'd read a magazine article that said boys who dreamed they were girls were really transgender, which meant he thought he should have been born a girl. Rodney explained to her that he'd never really thought about being or wanted to be a girl, that the whole issue of gender was stupid, and that her magazine probably wasn't peer reviewed and therefore didn't meet his minimum standards for citation.

After a couple of days trying not to think about it, Rodney concluded that his gender identity probably mattered about as much to him as the sex of whoever he wanted to have sex with. So it only mattered as an issue to people who annoyed him, but he personally found those details irrelevant. Later he'd say he was bisexual and gender-free, or more often, he'd ignore both issues and concentrate on science. However, thinking back from his straw bed in the smoky cabin, Rodney is sure the kiss in his high school dream hadn't been nearly as hot as it was this time. Also, he's a bit suspicious about the spiky black hair.

John's still asleep, apparently unchanged and unaffected beside him. Not that Rodney could see or do anything about it if John were as painfully hard as Rodney still is. Trying to ignore that distraction, he infers that John somehow managed to change Rodney's dream, at least a little bit, there at the end. That might be information he can use.

As sleep takes him again, Rodney struggles to remember interactive possibilities.

#

_Staring out his bedroom window, he wishes he could sleep. His hands twitch. Every time he drifts off he wakes to an adrenaline rush. He kicks. Sometimes he bites back a shout. There is no safe place. No one dares to visit him. His father drives them away. Even at school, people keep a distance. He is surrounded by a force field that repels all others._

_His father and brother exist in the same house but only come close enough to criticize. They won't let him leave._

_He opens his bedroom window to throw himself out. But he's lost the ability to fly._

_Staring into the night, he wishes for someone to come down the road and break him free. His mother, Davey, the one math teacher who liked him—but no one is coming. He's on his own._

_So he turns around and starts dismantling his furniture and shelves. In his closet he finds a lightweight tent, a mini-parachute, and a backpack with high tech frame and harness. A plan forms in his mind for a lightweight glider that might launch from the slope of roof outside his window. He starts assembling struts and supports. Maybe if he builds artificial wings he can rediscover his ability to fly._

_Then the voices start. From out of nowhere he hears: "Quit that," "You bring disgrace on our family," and "You'll never be good for anything," in his father's voice._

_Then his brother's higher tenor chimes in with: "You'll embarrass us both" and "Just do what you're supposed to."_

_His hands tremble and the triangle he's forming from tent poles won't align where he needs it. The whole project seems impossible. He'll never fly again._

_"Don't listen to those idiots. Even your befuddled adolescent brain is worth ten of theirs." The voice is harsh and cranky, but he likes it. "Just keep building. You can fly anything."_

_The frame comes together after that, and soon the components are large enough that he has to move to the roof outside his window. Using brackets and fasteners scavenged from his bookshelves and cabinets, he wrestles it all together and stretches the parachute silk across the top. Just as he's buckling his backpack harness to secure the new wings to his back, his father steps out from the porch below._

_"John, you must stop this foolishness at once!" His father shakes a fist in the air, and it feels like a punch to John's gut. He almost overbalances on the peak of the roof. "There is no escaping this. You've a duty to society and to your family!"_

_John knows he'll never be good enough if he stays. If he can't fly away either, then he might as well give up. He'd never make it on his own anyway._

_"Make it on your own? You just built an ultralight glider from scraps in your bedroom." It's the grumpy voice from before, and John looks around to see if there's another person shouting from the ground like his dad. "Hurry up, flyboy! Or are you planning to hang around until you build a motor?"_

_John likes the nickname "flyboy." His father never approved of nicknames, not even Johnnie. He wants to fly, but where can he go? There's nothing left here, and he repels everyone he meets._

_"Cease your willful insolence and come down here right now!" His father points at the ground, his face red with mounting anger._

_"You don't repel everyone," the contradictory voice rises in pitch and speed. "You're insolent, annoying, slouchy, and have impossible hair—and I still like you. Lots of others will too. Now fly!"_

_Keeping his eyes off the ground and fixed on the sky above, John runs down the roof and throws himself forward. He soars impossibly high. Perhaps he can fly anything._

#

Rodney's still recovering from his moment of panic. Without knowing the script for John's original dream or how much he could change it, the moment of launch from the roof had been terrifying.

Rodney needs a user's manual for this alien ritual, needs to know what happens if they die inside a dream. While he's wishing, he wants a user's manual for John, to explain all the things he won't talk about that someone who cares about him ought to know. Maybe if Rodney was better at reading people he'd know these things without being told, but he doubts it.

For the moment, it's enough to see John asleep and unchanged beside him. He watches John's chest rise and fall before the next dream takes over.

#

_He stands before a panel of academics, his first thesis committee, and hopes he won't embarrass himself by throwing up. What he has to say is more important than any imperatives from his digestive system. If they don't name a new wormhole theory after him for this, in addition to awarding his PhD, then the small-mindedness of established academics will have trampled the beauty of scientific genius once again._

_He waves his arms as he fills the whiteboard with equations. He works through the topological implications in two dimensions, then three, then more. His mind fills with visualizations of hypercubes and Klein bottles to build elaborate, shifting, multi-color representations of wormhole theory that others will never see as clearly. But from his mind's eye he distills it into math. The math itself is a thing of beauty as he explains point after point to the skeptical professors._

_When he's answered every question and out argued every criticism, his committee members sit stunned. There is an uncertain smile on the committee chair's face as he says, "Congratulations, you are now Doctor Meredith Rodney McKay."_

#

Rodney wakes easily from the dream about his first thesis defense. It had been a good day and an even better dream. He's always wished the committee, or at least someone, could have seen the topology as represented in his brain.

It takes a moment to realize his body feels different upon waking this time. His limbs are still heavy, but also stiff in a way that begs him to stretch. When he extends his arms and spine, they move!

Still tired, but unable to lie still a moment longer, Rodney stretches his fingers, shoulders, feet and legs. Then he sits and turns toward John, expecting him to do likewise. Instead, the Colonel lies stiff as a toy soldier, unmoving, still fully dressed except for the tac vest he'd set to the side of his bed when they arrived.

"Wake up, John." Rodney knows better than to shake the man if he can avoid it. Once before he was grabbed and immobilized before John came fully awake. Now Rodney is two seconds away from shaking John despite that, regardless of whatever injuries may result.

Finally, John's eyelashes flutter. His eyelids gradually open half way. "Cool, I understand McKay wormholes now." His voice is raspy, barely more than a whisper.

Rodney has an overwhelming urge to hug the man until the proverbial fluff puffs out of his ears. Instead he bends to retrieve John's water bottle and says, "Wonderful, now you're only a couple decades behind the idiots on earth who don't know about Stargates and how right I was back then. Drink some water."

John's mouth opens a little and his head bobs up less than an inch. His right hand flutters and lands back on the bed.

Rodney bites down his panic as he's sure John is hiding his own. "Let me join you."

He takes hold of John's shoulders. Luckily the man isn't a limp weight. He's not quite that badly off. Between the two of them, they shift until John is sitting almost naturally. Rodney keeps his left arm around John's back and supports much of his weight. John is able to hold his head close enough to upright to drink some water. After a few swallows, John's hand joins Rodney's on the water bottle.

Rodney whispers in John's ear, "From the wormhole comment, I'm assuming you remember the same eight dreams I do. But I'm just tired, and you're wiped out. Any idea why?"

"Something like the control chair." John leans his head against Rodney's, and it feels affectionate even if it might be mostly to conserve his strength. "Your dreams—even the bad ones—just amazing."

Rodney's sure he's blushing at the compliment. He hopes John will attribute any extra warmth to being pressed so close together. While Rodney sort of melts inside, he also worries, because John doesn't usually say such things. Even if John were at his best and willing, this isn't the time or place.

"If I prop you up here," Rodney asks, "Can you feed yourself a power bar while I check my datapad for the night's energy readings?"

"Yes, Dr. McKay, I can feed myself."

If that's John's best effort at a snappy comeback, he's worse off than he looks, which Rodney had pretty much concluded already. He gets John backed securely up against a sturdy pole in the center of one tent wall. Then he props John's tac vest on one side and his own on the other. He unwraps a power bar and puts it in John's hand, then watches John take a bite to make sure his arms are working well enough. Only then does Rodney realize he's also starving. He grabs a power bar of his own to gobble while checking the recorded energy readings.

Sure enough, there were eight spikes during the night, all higher than the blips Rodney had detected on arrival. The energy signature looks Ancient, but not nearly as strong as a ZPM.

Rodney unwraps another power bar and then gives it to John when he sees how tired and sleep mussed his usually sharp-eyed team leader still looks. "You're probably right about there being something Ancient involved, but the power levels are much lower than in the control chair. Eight spikes overnight of a few minutes each totaling less than an hour combined. You've spent longer in the control chair without this effect. Do you hurt anywhere else, or could there have been some drug in the wood smoke?"

John shakes his head, looking stronger already, and reaches his now empty right hand toward his water bottle. Rodney helps him open it and drink. Then he gets them each another power bar before John answers.

"Pretty sure this is only exhaustion, like being in enemy territory and not sleeping for a couple days, but no sore muscles or injuries. Could it be a distance effect? You thought the power source was on the other side of the fire by the permanent buildings."

Rodney snaps his fingers. "Good to see what passes for your brain is back online. Now, hypothesize that this ritual always involves whatever ancient artifact and you were hit harder because of your freak ATA gene and the remote connection. Perhaps you even increased the effect of the device on everyone's dreams. If so, we can come back later to collect data and negotiate trade for whatever gewgaws and nasty vegetable they produce here. If they mean us harm, our best bet is to leave as quickly and unobtrusively as possible. Agreed?"

"You're willing to leave without exploring the Ancient device? Should I be touched or worried?"

"Don't flatter yourself." Rodney rolls his eyes, but the smirk on John's face says Rodney isn't fooling either of them. "I already told you it's much less powerful than a ZPM, and it's not like sharing dreams is high on my list of things to investigate."

"That means we never have to talk about any this again?"

Rodney isn't ready to promise that, but it's not something to hit John with while he's recovering. "Notice: who's the one talking about it so far?"

John shifts forward and starts pulling on his tac vest. To someone who didn't know him, he might pass as recovered. "A few more minutes, and I can make it back to the gate, but negotiations will have to wait. Let me call Teyla and Ronon so we can all leave together, and Teyla can see to any needed diplomacy." He pulls out another power bar. Rodney does the same as he shifts into his own tac vest and thinks up ways to help John leave without looking like he's about to fall over.

#

Due to the misalignment of day and night cycles between Atlantis and Domar, it's already dinnertime when their team arrives back through the gate. The usual medical checks show nothing unexpected beyond John's extreme exhaustion and Rodney being more tired than he thinks he should be. The team eats a large meal together with little discussion. Teyla and Ronon acknowledge that they shared each other's dreams but are no more eager to discuss them than are John and Rodney. Soon they all go their separate ways.

In the past, Rodney would have kept to his own room after such a trying mission. But he's had a couple hours to think about the dreams and his other speculations while on Domar. Being a genius, he's concluded the best action he can take is to bully his way into John's room.

John opens his door looking flushed and warm, hair wet from the shower. He's dressed only in his boxers, but the undisturbed bed shows he hadn't made it that far yet. Rodney has already showered and brushed his teeth at his place, so he makes a beeline for John's bed as the door shuts behind him.

"In case you missed the memo, Rodney, I'm exhausted."

Rodney places his laptop and life signs detector on the table by John's bed. "Yes, and I've analyzed the data and decided we're sleeping together tonight, and I am not using sleeping as a euphemism, not until morning at the soonest."

John raises his eyebrows. Rodney wants to ruffle his hair.

"Look, I've adjusted the relevant sensor readings, and I have the LSD to check the hall so I can leave unobserved in the morning. It will all be fine, and I'll let you sleep as long as you want." With that, Rodney removes the radio from his ear and sets about removing his clothes.

John runs a hand through his hair. "Rodney, I'm not up to arguing with you right now."

"Don't worry. You'd lose anyway." Rodney climbs into bed and pulls the covers up to his waist as he ticks off points on his fingers. "One, it will be simpler if we're together in case any residual dream stuff happens. Two, I woke up between each dream last night even though you didn't wake up or react in any way, and yes, I worried. Deal with it. Three, I realized just how much baggage you had about being abandoned, inadequate, untouchable or whatever." John opens his mouth, clearly meaning to protest, but Rodney has overridden far more determined and more awake conversational adversaries in the past. He talks right over him. "I'm not saying you're still that kid or that messed up, but for tonight at least you will know I am here, want to be with you, and am pleased to touch you. Now get your bony butt in bed so we can sleep."

John raises both eyebrows and slouches over to the bed in a way that might be seductive if Rodney hadn't ordered his body not to go there. It helps that Rodney is more tired than usual himself.

Once John settles in bed and mentally turns down the lights, Rodney nudges up against him until they're as close to spooned as he thinks he can get away with. John lets out a put upon sigh, but relaxes against Rodney in seconds. In Rodney's mind he tells John, "I love you and I'm pretty sure from that kiss in my dream that you love me, too." Out loud he says, "Just remember you're my crazy-haired flyboy, and neither of us is ever going to leave the other behind. Happy New Year."

John squeezes his arm and holds on tight. Rodney figures it means at least "thanks" and possibly "I love you, too."


End file.
